They’ll be armed with more earplugs and race-themed T-shirts, while worried less about downtown traffic and minimum-night hotel stays. And they’ll certainly come with more food and drinks.

They aren’t race fans — the anywhere from 100,000 to 160,000 who are estimated to have attended the inaugural Grand Prix over Labor Day weekend 2011.

They are the Baltimore restaurateurs, hoteliers, retailers and street vendors who didn’t know what to expect from this year’s race and, some believe, didn’t make as much money from the three-day event as they had hoped.

“The whole weekend was really an unknown,” said Tom Leonard, general manager of Pickles Pub, noting that he prepared for race weekend the same way he prepares for three-game Orioles-Yankees series at Oriole Park across Paca Street from his bar.

This isn’t to say plenty of downtown businesses didn’t make plenty of money. Rather, with tens of thousands of race fans streaming into downtown over the course of several days, business owners and managers said they believe there is more money to be made off the event, which is scheduled to return to Baltimore in each of the next four years.

Restaurateurs and retailers said they didn’t accurately anticipate what customers would want or how much they would buy. Hoteliers said they didn’t successfully market to as many potential patrons as possible.

John Hein, director of business at the Sports Legends Museum of Maryland next to Camden Yards, raved about his sales during the Grand Prix, comparing business to the museum’s best weeks when the New York Yankees and their fans come to town. But he found he didn’t have enough of the hottest items he was selling, including earplugs and race-themed Natty Boh T-shirts and polos, and he had no way to restock the items before visitors left town.

The 600 sets of earplugs Hein bought at $1 and sold at $3 were sold out not even midway through the event.

One spot that didn’t sell out was the Hampton Inn Baltimore along Paca Street, next to Pickles Pub. While bookings were above average, Chris Guerrero, the hotel’s general manager, said occupancy didn’t exceed 90 percent any night over Labor Day weekend. That could be because the hotel didn’t do enough to inform potential customers of how close the hotel is to the race course, he said.

Meanwhile, businesses that were not within or along the 2.1-mile Inner Harbor race course blamed missed opportunities on misinformation.

Steve F. de Castro, operator of two Ruth’s Chris Steak House restaurants near the Inner Harbor, said some of his regular customers who live in the suburbs stayed away from downtown on race weekend.

De Castro said next year he plans to send an email to his customers encouraging them to continue to come to his downtown restaurants during the Grand Prix weekend.

“One thing we can do better is not make it sound so negative on how to get up to the city,” he said.

Race organizers said they already have started discussing how to help businesses make more money next year, said Pete Collier, the Baltimore Grand Prix’s chief operating officer.

“We’ll make it better next year,” he said. “We’re going to get them involved.”